5:33 AM,
Feb. 11, 2014

Written by

Josh Brown
and Michael Cass

Jane Smith Washington carefully jotted the names of slaves in her journal.

The wife of a wealthy plantation owner in 1858, Washington kept records of every shirt, shoe and piece of yarn given to hundreds of slaves on one of the country's largest tobacco farms.

Her detailed journal from Middle Tennessee's Wessyngton Plantation is among more than 11,000 documents that have helped give historians one of the most vivid pictures yet of slave life in America. The documents range from records kept by plantation owners of punishments and slave purchases to deeds and census records from the time. ...